


Meditations On Midi-Chlorians

by WeFellToTheDarkSideLongAgo (falconlord5)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22652125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falconlord5/pseuds/WeFellToTheDarkSideLongAgo
Summary: Corso and Tharan stop for a drink and meet with some trouble.
Kudos: 1





	Meditations On Midi-Chlorians

Meditations On Midi-Chlorians

Corso Riggs walked down to the cantina bar, pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. The fight with Nok Drayen left the crew exhausted. Risha locked herself in her quarters, grieving over the death of her father and barely eating. Corso couldn’t blame her; the poor woman had lost her father twice now. The captain was recovering from nasty wounds inflicted by both Nok and that no good sithspawn Skavak, and by all accounts Koyi Doneeta was the galaxy’s worst patient. At least she was in good hands on Carrick Station. Bowdaar had come out of the fight in the best shape of them all, physically and emotionally, but even he had picked up a collection of burns and scars.

_Could be worse, I suppose,_ Corso thought. _We finally got even with Skavak and stole Drayen’s treasure! Not a bad day at all. Better than our Jedi friends, anyway. Poor Galak. I know what losing family’s like, but I can’t imagine what watching a planet burn and coming out okay. I hope the Jedi have good therapists; he’s going to need it._

While Corso mused on Jedi mental health, someone else came up to the bar and sat down beside him.

“I hope I’m not intruding.” Corso looked up to see Tharan Cedrax, the scientist Janasen picked up on Nar Shadaa. Corso didn’t know what to make of the inventor; he found the other man to be sort of sleazy, more interested in his creature comforts than doing the right thing. But, he was apparently an old friend of a Jedi Council member, and if you couldn’t trust their judgement, who could you trust?

“Not at all doc. Grab yourself a drink. I’m just, uh, recuperating from the last adventure,” Corso replied, waving the bartender over.

“Yes, we all seemed to have reaped the whirlwind didn’t we?” Cedrax agreed sourly. The bartender showed up and Cedrax ordered a Corellian whisky. Corso thought that sounded good, so he ordered one himself.

“Do you think the Jedi will care if we put those drinks on their tab?” Corso asked the doctor while they waited for the bartender to return.

“I doubt it,” Cedrax replied. “Let’s see, our friend Galak single-handedly saved Tython, Janasen saved much of the Order from some sort of ‘mind-control’ plague (whatever that means), and Major Feara stopped all his traitorous former colleagues. If the Order objects to rewarding its heroes after all that, then to hell with them.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” the bartender arrived with their drinks and the two drank in companionable silence. As they enjoyed the booze, somewhere over to the left a commotion started. Finally it got so loud the two men couldn’t ignore it any longer and turned to see a scruffy looking ruffian holding court.

“Those damned Jedi! Lordin’ it over the rest of us with their ‘special powers’! I’m tellin’ you, the Jedi are nothin’ special. Wavin’ their damned glowsticks around, tellin’ everybody else how to live! All because they’ve got somethin’ called midi-chlorians.” The ruffian scrunched up his face. “Now what the hell is a midi-chlorian, I ask you?”

The crowd cheered at that. Corso and Cedrax, for their part, burst out laughing. The ruffian turned to face them, but before he could say anything Corso interjected:

“You must be from the Sith Empire, ‘cause here in the Republic? We’re taught all about midi-chlorians in our third year of school.”

The crowd went deathly silent at that. The ruffian scowled at the newcomers to his impromptu attempt to screw up basic biology.

“And who are you two? Two fancy doctors from Coruscant, I bet.”

“Master Riggs here has many virtues, but I do not believe a doctorate is among them.”

Corso laughed. “Nope, I’m just a farm boy from Ord Mantell. But at least I remember my grade school education, unlike some people.”

The ruffian scowled even further. Some of his listeners chuckled, but he silenced them with a glare.

“Okay wise guys. What the hell is a midi-chlorian, anyway?”

“One of the millions of different kinds of microrganisms that live in sapient cells,” Cedrax explained.

“I don’t have no goddamn bugs living inside me!”

“’Course you do,” Corso said. “You’ve got _Bacteroidetes_ and _Firmicutes_ in your gut, _Actinomyces_ in your mouth…”

The ruffian shook his head. “You can’t fancy talk your way out of this! Besides, what the hell does a farm boy know about this shit anyway?”

“Microbiology is an important part of farming,” Corso explained, “unless you enjoy watching your crops and livestock die. And that includes midi-chlorians. An animal or plant that has a low midi-chlorian count is a critter that’s not going to live for long.”

Cedrax nodded and picked up from where Corso left off. “Midi-chlorians are unique in that they one of the few micro-organisms to inhabit all living cells, regardless of species or planet of origin. As such, they’re vital to all life. They are the single most successful example of a symbiotic relationship in the history of the galaxy.”

The ruffian must have sensed he was losing his audience, because he was starting to look nervous. Rather than back down, he scrunched his face up even more and advanced on the two men.

“Okay then. If all that’s true, then what makes the Jedi think they’re so damned important?”

“I confess I find the Jedi stuffy, irritating and prone to running into life-threatening situations,” Cedrax replied dryly, “but I’ve never met a Jedi who, how did you put it? ‘Waved their glowsticks around, telling everybody else how to live?’ Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“What the hell do you know?”

“Well, we just traveled across eight different planets with three Jedi, so I think we know more than you,” Corso cut in. Then he did a quick count on his fingers. “Actually, make that two Jedi and one apprentice.”

Someone in the crowd, a heavyset Lethan Twi’lek woman with a pockmarked face turned to face Corso. “What where they like? I’ve never met a Jedi.”

“Most people haven’t,” Corso replied, likewise turning to face the woman. “Makes them easy to stereotype, I guess. The three we traveled with were all a little different. The apprentice was kind of a hothead, liked to crack jokes and generally get in trouble. Her master was this quiet, easygoing guy with a real dry sense of humour. The third, his sister, was kind of a sourpuss. But she wasn’t mean or anything, just grouchy.”

Somebody else in the crowd chuckled. “You just described my uncle, his wife and his wife’s sister.”

The ruffian who had started this commotion whipped around to face the crowd. “Don’t fall for it! Don’t you see what they’re doing! They’re trying to humanize the Jedi Order! Make you think they’re not a bunch of high-falutin’ overlords! We know what the Jedi are like! They control the banks, they control the Senate—!”

Corso and Cedrax burst out laughing. “I’ve never met a Jedi who wasn’t allergic to credits,” Cedrax replied after he got the laughter under control.

“Or politicians,” Corso agreed, still laughing. “Putting a Jedi in the same room as a Senator is like putting a whole bunch of matches near an open flame. Somebody is gonna get burnt.”

The heavyset Twi’lek kept staring at Corso. “I hear the Jedi steal children,” she said.

“No,” Cedrax replied firmly, turning to face the woman, all laughter gone. “The Jedi do not steal children. Yes, the Order prefers to identify potential recruits at a young age. The reason for this is practicality. For all their silly superstitions and religious trappings, the Jedi do have strange powers. Powers that would be… difficult, if not impossible, for ordinary people to manage. And these powers often manifest at a young age. Can you imagine a child, _your_ child, suddenly having to come to grips with newfound telekinesis besides all the normal pressures of childhood? Hm? So the Jedi prefer to recruit young, before the child ends up permanently traumatized by their ‘gifts’. But it’s not a necessity. There are at least a dozen other so-called Force traditions scattered throughout the galaxy, like the Baran Do for example. And parents, any parent, is at perfect liberty to tell the Jedi Order no. Compare the Sith, who exterminate every local religion and enslave the survivors.”

The lout who’d started the started the argument scowled and muttered:

“That’s just propaganda.”

“The Zabrak’s might disagree,” Corso replied drily. “How many of their colonies did they lose when the Sith invaded? Lot of Zabrak refugees, lot of recorded evidence of Sith-instigated genocides….”

“I heard the Zabrak’s only lost one percent of their colonies,” somebody in the crowd shouted.

Someone else, a skinny Togorian, turned and shouted back: “That’s still a thousand plus colonies, Dack. We’re talking billions, maybe trillions of people there.”

Someone else in the crowd, a Duros from the sounds of him, piped up. “Two and a half trillion at last count, and that’s just the Zabraks. We lost a few hundred colonies in our own right and so did our Neimodian cousins. That’s not including joint ventures with other species, either. And nobody got it as bad as the Twi’leks; they had a new homeworld set up and everything. They were going to get off Ryloth, make a new start, not have to sell their kids into slavery just for some kriffing lunch money. Then bang! The Sith show up, take over the colony and every last one of those Twi’leks is a slave again. That was what? A tenth of their population? Nearly a third of Ryloth’s economy went into that colony too, if the rumours are true.”

The lout whirled around, eyes wide with fear. “That’s not true! None of that is true! It’s all lies…” He never finished his sentence. The heavyset Twi’lek grabbed him and threw him to the ground.

“It is true! All of it, you kriffing Sith bastard!” she screamed. “My clan was on that colony! My niece! My nephews! They all had those… those strange powers! And the Sith came for them, one night! Killed everyone who resisted. My sister, my brothers… all dead! Even killed the children they came for!”

The crowd backed away from the angry Twi’lek and her punching bag as she rained blows down on the agent provocateur, forming a circle around them. The onlookers whispered to each other, taking bets and encouraging or the other, sometimes both.

Disgusted by this blatant display of playground behaviour, both Corso and Cedrax moved forward to stop the ensuing beatdown, however justified it may have been. They themselves were stopped, however, by the sight of a two-metre tall figure dressed in brown and white robes cutting his way through the crowd.

Galak Daemon reached down and pulled the Twi’lek woman off of the Sith agent. She screamed at him:

“Let me go! Let me go! They murdered my family! They…!”

“I know, I know. It’s okay.” Galak hugged the woman tight, who screamed and kicked and raged before breaking down and sobbing into his robes. The Sith agent picked himself and dusted himself. He took one good look at the Jedi Knight, decided he didn’t want any piece of that, and turned tail.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Corso muttered and drew his pistol. A flash of brilliant blue stun rings later, and the agent provocateur was down for the count.

“You shouldn’t have fired your blaster in the middle of a crowd, Corso,” Galak chided him. Corso turned to get a better look at the oversized Jedi. There was no real censure in his face, just the same gentle amusement he always displayed. He was still holding the Twi’lek, who continued to sob shamelessly into his robes.

Corso holstered his blaster. “I know, I know. I just didn’t want to touch him, you know? Even for a Sith agent, he was kind of slimy.”

“Well, somebody will have to anyway,” Cedrax said, disgust clear in his voice. “Touch him, I mean. We can’t very well leave him out there in the middle of the cantina floor, now can we?”

“’Course we can,” Corso replied. “Me and the captain do it all the time. Station security will be by in a few minutes, they can handle him.”

Galak chuckled. “What a pair of pirates.” He looked down at the woman still clutching his chest. “Are you going to be okay, ma’am?”

The Twi’lek shook her head. “No. My daughter has the Force. Are you going to take her away? Train her to fight against the Sith?”

Galak shook his head. “Your daughter has a unique, precious gift. The Jedi Order would love to have her. But we understand; the Order is not the only way. If you want to keep her and raise her yourself, we understand. Our recruiter will give you some aids to help teach her when her powers get stronger. But that’s it, I promise.”

“Thank you,” the Twi’lek detached herself from the Jedi and walked off. Denied a spectacle, the crowd broke up. Cedrax and Corso went back to their drinks. Corso didn’t look, but he was sure Galak picked up the Sith agent and took him to station security.

Stupid Jedi. Always trying to do the right thing.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> The Star Wars fandom is loaded with misconceptions, lies and falsehoods, particularly surrounding the Jedi Order.
> 
> This is a deliberate take that against many of those misconceptions. I say take that, because I'm not stupid enough to think the Star Wars fandom can be convinced to see logic or reason.


End file.
